Hal Sutton, shown teeing off at Doral Golf Resort on March
3, won last year's Players Championship by one shot.

Defending champion Hal Sutton, the PGA Tour's consummate
outdoorsman, should be sharp when he tees up today in The Players Championship.

He's rested, relaxed and ready after a quick trip to the
seclusion of his new Lone Star State hideaway.

Sutton spent several days with his family last week at
the hunting ranch he bought in the Texas hill country in October. He didn't
touch a golf club.

"It's a place to get away from the world for a while,"
says Sutton, 42. "Cellphones don't work very well there. It's neat to go down
there and do nothing."

His wife, Ashley, decided to name the isolated property
"Our Sanctuary."

"It was within my budget, so I did it," Sutton says of
the 600-acre spread in Junction, about 100 miles northwest of San Antonio. "It's
neat to go down there. I love to hunt."

He actually raises deer on the ranch, but Sutton hasn't
decided yet if he'll open it to commercial hunting. It's basically an off-the-beaten
path kind of place where family and friends can kick back.

The ranch is 10 miles off the interstate, 6 miles into
the woods, nestled atop some hills. It sits at the end of County Road 411. Try
finding that on a map.

Woods
gained friend at TPC

Hal Sutton's lasting memory
of his one-stroke victory against Tiger Woods at last year's Players Championship
is the sportsmanlike way Woods handled himself afterward.

At the 18th green, when the
dramatic duel was decided, Woods shook Sutton's hand and said, "This is
what it's all about. Well played."

Says Sutton: "I thought that
was a classy way to handle it. Tiger was real good about it."

They finished Monday because
rain and lightning forced a postponement Sunday with Sutton and Woods
playing No. 12. Sutton led by three.

Woods sank a 15-foot eagle
putt at 16, cutting the lead to one, but Sutton wasn't unnerved.

"I was still ahead," says Sutton,
who earned $1,080,000 for his wire-to-wire victory. "I knew Tiger had
to play 17 and 18 the same way I did. It was just matching shots then."

 By
Harry Blauvelt

"We didn't even have a phone down there last hunting season,"
Sutton says. "We finally got a regular phone out there this week."

The nearest golf facility is 30 miles away in Kerrville.

"If I felt I couldn't afford two days on the ranch, I wouldn't
have gone down there," he says. "I'd have stayed where I could hit golf balls.
I might not have touched a club for a couple days if I'd stayed home."

Home is a spacious stone and redwood cedar house in the
gated community of Oak Alley in Bossier City, La. His family owns Jeems Bayou
Production Corp. Read: oil. His father, Howard, runs the company. Hal and his
dad are partners in S&S Farms in Blevins, Ark., where they deal in oil and gas,
cattle and horses.

Sutton rides and sells cutting horses as a side business
and hobby. He enters cutting horse competitions, although he doesn't ride nearly
as much as he used to.

"My back bothers me from doing it," he explains. "I enjoy
it, and I'll do it more as I phase out of golf. But it's not in the best interests
of my playing good golf."

This week, he'll be wearing his golf hat instead of a cowboy
hat or roughneck's hard hat as he takes his best shots on the Stadium Course
at TPC at Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.

The peace and tranquility of his Texas ranch will stand
in sharp contrast to the media blitz that Sutton is facing as defending champion.

He should be brimming with confidence after beating Tiger
Woods by one stroke in a dramatic duel last year to become the oldest winner
(41 years, 10 months, 28 days) of the tournament.

The shot Sutton remembers most was a third-round tee shot
he hit into the water at the par-3 17th, the famous signature hole featuring
an island green.

"As golfers, we always remember the bad ones, and the good
ones seem to go unnoticed," says Sutton, who made triple bogey. "I carried it
to the backside of the green and the ball bounced into the water."

Launching an accurate shot onto that green can be as difficult
as landing a jet on the deck of an aircraft carrier in a roiling sea. It is
not for the faint of heart.

"Everybody who stands on that tee, even for a $5 Nassau,
they get a little anxious about it," Sutton says.

It was one of the few bad shots he hit on the way to winning
the tournament for the second time.

He also triumphed in 1983, the first year he played it,
triggering comparisons to Jack Nicklaus. Starting in 1982, he won seven times
his first five years on the Tour, including the 1983 PGA Championship.

But the weight of great expectations proved a heavy burden
for Sutton, who lost his swing and his confidence. He was winless from 1987
through 1994, finishing 185th on the money list in 1992 with $39,234.

Sutton has since scripted one of the most remarkable career
comebacks in PGA Tour history.

He was a 1999 Ryder Cup hero with a 3-1-1 record. He's
won a total of five times and $7 million the past three years. In 2001,
he's 28th on the money list with $409,470. He's been in contention the last
two events.

"My game is coming along nicely," he says. "I feel pretty
excited about getting back here."

Because his two wins bookend his rise, fall and rebirth,
he has a soft spot for The Players Championship.

"Players are treated like royalty here," Sutton says. "The
course is always in perfect condition. You play one of the toughest courses
in the country against maybe the best field in all of golf."

The field includes Woods, who won last week's Bay Hill
Invitational, just as he did in 2000 the week before hooking up with Sutton
in their memorable battle.

For Sutton, that victory was especially sweet because there
was so much talk about whether Woods intimidated other players. Sutton didn't
blink.

"As the years have gone by, I realized how special this
tournament really is," Sutton says. "To have won twice, it's a dream come true."